Danny

Avernion: yay! I love these boys so much! I'm so glad someone else loves them too! I hope you like Josh/Janeatte just as much.

***

God, he'd fucked up.

The crack in the door of the shower was almost a foot long, but it looked like Danny's shoulders had taken the brunt of it. There was no blood. He hated being clinical like this, but if he had learned anything from his love, it was how important it was to be dispassionate at a time like this. Analyze. Know. Act.

All right, so Danny would be sore and angry, but not broken. Good. It was an inexcusable act, but not an irredeemable one. Ashli was Catholic. He believed greatly in penance. Also, guilt. But guilt could come later. Right now, he had to fix this.

He hit speed dial number one on his phone.

“Hi, Brenda? Hey, it's Ashli. Yeah, I went home for lunch. Look, I've had a bit of a fender-bender on the freeway and now I have to go to the emergency room to have my neck looked at. No, no, nothing serious, but I won't be back. I'm sorry about ... yeah ... shit ... well, I can't wait on this, my neck feels like shit.” He tapped his fingers while his boss bitched. “I know.” She bitched some more. “Can't you give me half a day of sick leave?” Bitch, bitch. “Great. I'll see you tomorrow then?” She hung up. “Guess that's a yes.”

Dialing another number, he sat there on the floor, trying to figure out what he was going to do with the shower door.

“Hi. Josh? What are you doing today? Yeah, it's Ashli. Remember when you told me you would do anything for me? Can you come over to my place? Great. Pick up flowers on your way over. Yeah, roses. I know, but they're not for me. Get those pretty white ones with the pink centers. Thanks.”

Josh appeared on his doorstep with a dozen roses and a box of chocolate donuts almost two hours later. He was yawning. “Hi, honey.” He leaned down a bit and gave Ashli a kiss on the lips. Josh was the tallest person Ashli knew and, aside from Danny, the prettiest. Of course, Josh worked very hard at being pretty; curled eyelashes with little sparkles, manicured nails with silver polish, matching toes, perfect hair, dyed jet black, sprayed within an inch of it's life, with cute blue highlights. “So, who are the flowers for?”

“Oh, donuts, hey.” Ashli snatched them and ushered in his guest. “You haven't met my boyfriend yet, have you?”

“No, you said I'd get to meet him when penguins play t-ball in hell.”

“Well, they're about to start the second inning.”

“Oh, honey, what happened?”

“Want some coffee?”

Josh nodded.

Ashli got them both coffee. Then he sat Josh down and confessed.

“Oh, my, heavens,” was all Josh could say.

“You see why I couldn't introduce you to him.”

Cali came over to investigate this new person, jumping up on the kitchen table and thrusting her feline nose in Josh's face. “Oh, hello, precious. You didn't mention getting a cat.”

“It's Danny's.”

“It?” Josh welcomed her onto his lap where, being no fool, the cat ensconced herself immediately, purring.

“Cali. We're talking about something serious.”

“Oh, you're a pretty one, you are,” Josh told Cali, scratching under her chin. “Yes, of course I see why you couldn't introduce us. I'd have stolen him right away. What I don't understand is why you want to introduce us now. He sounds like the perfect man. What would make me want him less so now? Because you've been a perfect beast to him, hasn't he, Cali? You'd deserve it, you know.”

“I need your help to keep him.”

“Why should I help you?”

“Do you still love me?”

Josh looked up, eyes narrow.

“I'll share. That's what's in it for you. You get him, you get me. I can't see how else to fix this. He needs someone who can draw him out and I think that's you, but I'm not willing to give him up. Besides, there are things I do for him you can't.”

“The pain.”

“Yes.”

Josh thought about it, absently stroking Cali's soft white fur. “And you also would be my lover?”

“Yeah.”

“No.”

“What?”

“This is fuckin' clinical. No. Besides, he sounds like a headcase.”

“If he weren't a headcase, he wouldn't be perfect.”

Josh laughed at that.

“Please, it's not clinical. It's the chance you'll never have again of having someone perfect. Sure, you got me as baggage -”

“You're hardly baggage.”

“He's going to leave me and if he leaves me, he's going to do something stupid like move away and become a hermit in the Himalayas or something. He believes there's something wrong with him. That he's ugly, damaged. He thinks about himself like you'd think about a Nazi war criminal.”

“That's so sad.”

“No, no, like a Nazi would think about himself if he were like reformed and regretful and stuff.”

Josh looked positively sick.

“He needs us as much as we need him.”

“And why am I important again?”

Ashli sighed. Standing, he began to pace. “You’re important because I can’t reach him. I’m too … too …”

“Manly?”

“Confrontational. I’m always yelling. And I’m toppy. I can’t seem to pull him out of his shell. He won’t talk to me, but I think he’d talk to you. I think … he’ll let you in.”

“And the reason why I can’t just have him without you?” Josh sat, scratching Cali’s ears, smiling smugly.

“You do and I’ll beat you until you aren’t so pretty anymore.”

They stared at one another.

“I suppose I should be glad you’re willing to share more than the cat.”

“You can keep Cali.”

“How dare you!” Lifting Cali up, he looked her straight in the eye. “Did you hear that?” Cali squoke not a word.

“How the fuck are you doing that?”

“Doing what?”

Ashli gestured vaguely at the cat, whom Josh had settled back on his lap. “That cat, that bigglesworth you have there! She eats my toes, do you know that?”

“Truly?”

“I’ll be sound asleep, all cuddled up with Danny and she’ll jump up on the bed and start munching on my toes.”

Josh bit his lip, trying not to laugh.

“And whenever I'm doing something she jumps on top of it and sticks her butt in my face.”

“She loves you.”

“That's what Danny says.”

Josh smiled, but said not a word.

“Cat people are creepy.” Ashli crossed his arms, annoyed. “If you do it, I'll let you keep Cali.”

“You said I can have her already.”

“I take it back,” he grinned, “unless you help me.”

Josh looked Cali in the eye. They were communicating something, but Ashli wasn't sure what. “All right, honey, but I'm not sure why you like him,” he told the feline.

“Danny does that. She's a cat. Dude, she's not a person. He let's her order him around to. I'm like -”

“Cat people are different than you.”

“I guess.”

“Because you're a selfish ass.”

“Oh, thanks.”

“Ashli, you threw your boyfriend into a shower door because you ... you got lost in your own melodrama. If I agree to this idiocy, what's to say you won't throw me through a glass door?”

The blonde man frowned, staring down at his lap. “I never hurt you, not once.”

“I don't think you ever even raised your voice to me ... unless you wanted me to get you a beer.”

“I didn't?”

Josh shook his head. Leaning forward, resting his chin on the palm of his hand, he said, “We were together for a year and a half and I don't think we ever fought until the day you walked in on me with that guy ...” He frowned. “What was his name?”

“How would I know? I barely remember him.”

“I lived with him for a fuckin' month. Why don't I remember his name?”

“All I remember is he had this overbite.”

“God that was gross.”

“It was?”

“Everything he did was gross.”

“Then why did you live with him?”

“He wasn't you.” Josh sat back in his chair, petting the cat on his lap. “Okay, so we know you're not going to hurt me, which gives rise to the second question, you and I fizzled off into such nothing the last time I was forced to cheat on you with the gross guy with the overbite to make you go away. Why do you think we'd be good together now? Bullet point it for me.”

“You'd be good with Danny. I'm willing to share.”

“Oh.”

“There are one of him and two of us. To make it work with him, I am willing to cut you a share.”

“We're getting back to the part where this sounds like mafia.”

Ashli laughed. “Do you want a share of the most perfect guy in existence or are we both going to let him get away?”

“Point. But this leads to my third question.”

“Which is?”

“You threw him through a fuckin' door.”

“Into a door.”

“You cracked it,” Josh accused, his voice rising. Cali, not liking the noise, vacated his lap. He thought that was probably wise. “So why is he going to stay with you?”

“Because you're going to convince him.”

“How do I know you won't hurt him again?”

“I won't if you're here.”

They stared at one another.

“It's all you,” Ashli whispered. “You're the ... x-factor or whatever. We need you. Please come back to me.”